By: Kobe Vergara
As the month of March quickly approaches, students who applied regular decision will be finding out their decisions and reflect back on the whole process of applications.
Towards the end of high school, students begin to really consider what they want to do in their future. For a good majority of seniors, their next step in life is attending a college in order to further their education.
During the early months of every new year, high school seniors get ready to either be accepted, or rejected to the colleges they have applied to.
Before students can figure out what a college has decided, they must endure the process of submitting applications. Seniors who have already completed their applications get to reflect back on the whole process, and give advice to juniors.
One of the most important parts of getting ready is to understand that the process itself starts at the end of junior year, when students have time over summer to study for that last-minute SAT or ACT test in August or October, get a head start on writing essays, and pick what colleges they want to apply to.
Some students have already known since freshman year where they want to go, while others are unsure where they fit in best.
This makes summer of junior year the best time to figure out where to apply based on interests, costs, and planning everything out.
Johnny Ku, a senior at Mission Viejo High School states that it is important to, “start as early as possible, getting ready and coordinating everything you have to do so you do not have to feel stressed about application deadlines, such as figuring out that if you do want to go to college, what kind, major, travels, and future occupations work for you.”
Many seniors agree that it is important that future applicants are aware of deadlines in order to prevent missed submissions and cramming. Most college applications such as the Common Application and UC application open in the summer, which gives plenty of time for students to take a look at the application.
Even if a student does not complete their application in the summer, it is a good idea to understand how much time is needed to finish it, especially the supplemental essays.
Bill Le, another senior at MVHS, states that, “the most stressful part was definitely the essays. I lacked ideas for the four essays I had to write for the UC’s. Procrastination was a really big problem since I always felt that I had enough time to do all of the essays. In the end I feel my essays were pretty good.”
Like Bill stated, essays are a vital part of a college application if they are required. It is important to make them as genuine and as original as possible in order to stand out to the admission officers even if it takes a few days or weeks to write.
Besides writing the essays, one of the worst feelings is submitting an application with missing or incorrect information. It is important to make sure that each part of the application is correct, especially since it is a tedious process with many parts. Look over every part of the application more than once to prevent any hopeful last minute calls to admissions offices in hopes of fixing an error.
After submitting applications, the stress isn’t over for many. Senior Matthew Guerra states that, “the most stressful part is actually waiting for the school’s response.” Johnny Ku also stated that, “spending a lot of money not knowing if it is going to amount to anything” is another worry of his.
While this year’s seniors and years before have had similar worries and stresses, they hope that the junior class of 2020 will understand the seriousness of college applications and follow this advice to prevent any unnecessary stress and confusion before the waiting game.
